Why I Haven't Written by Phil Hall - A Gentle Man (Brick Books) - Brick Books Poetry Map (sitios de interés)

Phil Hall was born in 1953 and raised on farms in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. His newest book of poems is An Oak Hunch, the title of which comes from one of the sequences in this five-sequence selection and is the author’s homage to a poetic mentor, Al Purdy. Hall’s first book, Eighteen Poems, was published in Mexico City in 1973.

Why I Haven't Written takes Phil Hall back to Ontario roots in family immediate and extended, and on again into the larger world. In his beautifully-controlled poems, he catches much of a life in nodes of consequence - often painful for the poet, but not for the reader. The life may have seemed ill-fitting to the one who blundered or was buffeted through much of it, but in the long run it made him compassionate and observant.

Cover art: The Whispering Statue, Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, by Carolyn Keene (1937)

Phil Hall reads A Gentle Man from Why I Haven't Written on Audioboo

Retirement

Why I Haven't Written - Review (Canadian Book Review Annual (1985))

From bath to verse - Review (Books in Canada (January/February 1986))

Phil Hall member profile (Writers Union of Canada)

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